Practice questions for IB 201 midterm Sp 06
The exam will encompass material from the last 9 lectures. You should review assigned
readings, class outlines/notes linked to your lecture schedule, notes you took in class, ppt slides
and homework. Review the terms. The exam will be worth 125 points and you will have a full
class period (80 min) to complete the exam. As stated on the web pages for the course under the
heading “Exams”, “There will be NO MAKEUP EXAMS.” Only if you have a medical or
personal emergency might an exception be granted.
The following questions will give you an idea of the style of some questions for the exam. There
will be some in which you fill in the blank with the correct term recalled from memory, some in
which you will have a selection of possible answers provided and you pick the correct one (as in
quizler), and some in which you match a term to a definition or a scientist to a given scientific
discovery or evolutionary insight. You will have a selection of questions on the last page, from
which you will provide answers for 2. These short-answer questions will be in two groups and
you will select one from each group.
A. From the following terms, select the correct one to complete the sentences below. There are
more terms than sentences so not all are used, and some terms might be used more than once.
analogous
apomorphic
arthropods
bilateral
chordates
cladogram
DNA
echinoderms
guinea pigs
ingroup
mitochondrial gene
monophyletic
multi-copy gene family
outgroup
phenotypic plasticity
phylogram
plesiomorphic
radial
ribozyme
RNA
sister group
symmetrical
sympatric
synapomorphic
1. __synapomorphic_____________ characters are used to establish monophyletic groups.
2. Hennig identified a certain class of characters that were not useful for establishing
phylogenetic relationships; these he called ____plesiomorphic______________ characters.
3. If a tree diagram portrays information about branch length, representing the number of evolutionary
changes along the branch, it is called a ___phylogram__________________.
4. The tree to the right is called a ___cladogram____________.
5. There is mounting evidence that the earliest self-replicating molecule was composed of [monomers
of] ____RNA___________________. Note: I should have included the words in brackets.
6. A __multi-copy gene family___ _ can be used with some success to root the universal tree of life.
7. Radial symmetry appears to be secondarily derived in some of the ____echinoderms_______.
B. Select the appropriate answer from the list beneath each question
A
1. This tree
B
C
can be represented as
*a) ((B+A)(C))
b) (A(C+B)
c) (C+B)(A)
d) (CAB)
e) (ABC)
2. The endosymbiont theory of cell evolution postulates that mitochondria were once free living members
of the taxon ____________________.
a) Archaea
b) Fungi
*c) Bacteria
d) Eucarya
e) Cyanobacteria
3. _____ _____________ symmetry is a property of the protostomes and deuterostomes.
a) duplicated
b) bauplaüne
*c) bilateral
d) radial
e) L- and D4. The extant chordate organism thought to share a common ancestor with all the rest of the chordates is
________________ .
a) Chordata
b) Trilobita
c) Radiolaria
*d) Amphioxus
e) Proteobacteria
5. A pattern of evolution seen in both the fossil record and in the reconstruction of phylogenies with data
from DNA reveals that major evolutionary change can occur very rapidly and remain slow or even static
for a very long time. This pattern is known as _______________________.
a) gradualism
b) descent with modification
c) gigantism
*d) adaptive radiation
e) ecological adaptation
6. From the diagram below you can conclude that
a) A is ancestral to B, C, and D.
b) B is more closely related to A than to C and D.
*c) C is more closely related to B than to A
d) B is the sister group to A
e) A is older than B, C and D.
A
B
C
D
C. Questions from which to select could include:
1. Label the tips with the appropriate taxa as they are known to be related on the metazoan tree (I’ll
provide the tree) and map the principal synapomorphies that unite the major groups.
See accompanying slide taken from Futuyma
2. Name the two principal hypotheses concerning the movement of humans out of Africa and
describe the differences between the hypotheses. What does each suggest in terms of the
behavior of colonizing humans.
Get this from lecture notes and from book.